Rosemary,
May be related to previous question. In netinfo manager there's a
list of users. This includes me and root but also about 12 others,
including the phantom "windowserver"; daemon, jabber et etc
What is this? Are they freeloaders on my wireless? If so how? I've
set a password etc.
They sound pretty innocuous. Since Mac OS is based on UNIX there are
a lot of little programs that do things in the background, providing
various services. The windowserver process manages windows; daemons
are background things too; jabber is an instant messaging thing (as
far as I recall). Often, users are automatically created which own
such programs.
Of course, a naughty program or virus of some kind might well be
implemented as one of these types of process, so you can never be
sure...
These users are all perfectly normal and required for the healthy
functioning of your system.
Part of Unix's security is that it's theoretically designed to
attempt to run services with only the privileges that particular
service requires. Privileges are assigned to each 'user' (who may not
be a real person, but just a meaningful name usually associated with
a specific task, like 'mail'), and the groups each user may belong to.
Hence you may find users who only have privileges to collect data
from other programs and send it to the printer. Programs running as
these users don't have privileges to erase your whole hard drive, for
example.
I highly recommend not changing anything in NetInfo Manager unless
you have some idea of what you're doing, and a good backup. :)
Have fun,
Shay
--
=========================== Shay Telfer ================================
Perth, Western Australia Technomancer The love of liberty is the love
Opinions for hire [POQ] of others; the love of power is
http://public.xdi.org/=Shay fnord the love of ourselves - Hazlitt
